I would argue this wasn't planned. If you want to cause damage, why do it in the middle of the night?
Not sure how full this bridge is during rush hour, but I would imagine quite a lot more than it was when it collapsed now.
But no solution is really free. Either you pay directly (Kagi), or it is paid through ads (Google) or it is some free open source solution, which then is paid through the time people put into it in their free time and in that case there should be donations or contributions as well, at least from people who can afford it. 🤷♂️
It doesn't really matter to me if they use their own crawler or use results from another search engine. What matters to me is the results i'm seeing for my search queries.
And if they "roll in the ads later" or the service deteriorates, I can still switch to another search engine.
No need for "just trust us", if you can just compare the product yourself🤷♂️
I don't have a ton of experience with it yet, but I don't have to scroll through a bunch of actual ads, followed by a bunch of not-really-but-basically-still ads, before finding what I'm looking for.
I'm paying for the service, not because I just fell for their marketing, but because I actually have the impression of getting noticeably less "polluted" results, especially when searching for something easily advertisable (e.g. "best X to buy 2023").
I don't need to convert anyone else. Everyone can just try it themselves and judge whether they feel it's worth their money or not. As of now, for me it seems to be the case.
I started using Kagi. By paying for the search engine, at least I can ensure the search engine's goals align with mine, instead of with whoever pays most for advertisement.
I haven't used it for a long time yet, but so far I'm satisfied with its results!
Revanced isn't in an app store (at least not a legit version), you have to build it yourself. Otherwise it would probably end like Vanced. Take care of scam websites, this is the real one: https://revanced.app/
I watched some video some time ago where they put that in perspective: If I stopped causing any climate negative emissions now and for the rest of my life, it would amount to like 1 second emitted by the top 100 companies (not 100% sure about the numbers exactly, but it's basically the same order of magnitude).
I'm not saying that we should stop caring about it at all, but it's much much more important to try and steer politics into the right direction, than it is to change personally. Still, do all you can personally, but imo it's fine to "cheat" here and there.
I would argue this wasn't planned. If you want to cause damage, why do it in the middle of the night? Not sure how full this bridge is during rush hour, but I would imagine quite a lot more than it was when it collapsed now.